An Easier Way To Learn English Grammar!
A Note About “How to Learn English Grammar”
When I attended a course for advanced learning techniques in Canada some years ago, one statement particularly made an impression on me. It was this:
“The very process of teaching grammar prevents a student from learning it!”
Here is an example:
Incorrect sentence: “He arrived at the party wearing his blue, old jeans.”
Correct sentence: “He arrived at the party wearing his old, blue jeans.”
Why is the first sentence incorrect? Because of a rule.
The rule states that adjectives should be used in the following order:
1. Quantity 2. Opinion3. Size 4. Age 5. Shape | 6. Color 7. Origin 8. Material 9. Purpose |
Notice that Age (4) comes before Color (6). So when describing the jeans it should be “old, blue jeans”, not “blue, old jeans”.
What happens when you mention two adjectives together and your brain tries to remember the rule? Your conversation comes to an immediate STOP!
After many seconds of hesitation, and after your mind performs mental gymnastics trying to remember the order of categories, you might be able to continue your conversation but your confidence and fluency suffer!
What’s a better method? Learn from listening to English and hearing sentence examples over and over until you get a sense or a feel for what sounds right.
For example, when listening to a well-known piece of music you will immediately recognize a wrong note. It doesn’t sound right, just as “blue, old jeans” doesn’t sound right.
So keep repeating, listening, and practicing English and you will develop an instinct for what sounds right and you will naturally start to speak or write the words in the correct order.
The same applies to tenses. Rather than trying to identify each tense with a label and mentally going through an exercise such as “I need to use the present perfect continuous here”, identify the idea you want to express and what sounds right.
Do you want to describe something that started but has not yet finished? Then you would say: “We have been waiting to give our order to the waiter for the last 20 minutes!” This is the present perfect continuous tense but you really don’t need to know that. Just get the idea and sense and feel what sounds right.
This way of learning English grammar is not only easier, but much more effective!
This is an excerpt from my FREE online course.
Enroll here now: http://goodenglish.online